Suspended
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: It is as if some invisible hand is holding it there,suspending it between two places, and at the same time, holding her together.


**A/N: SVU still isn't mine, people. Figured I'd try my hand at writing Casey, so...here goes nothing. **

* * *

She watches the pen roll across her desk.

The stupid thing about this is that she put it in one place, but it didn't want to stay. And so it rolled, across the flat and polished surface, to wherever it really wants to be. Just when it reaches the edge, it stops. Almost as if some invisible hand is holding it there. Suspending it between life and death, good and evil…sanity and insanity.

Casey stares, strangely fascinated.

In the desk drawer, there is a picture that she keeps there. It reminds her of happier times. She takes it out and stares at herself. She is smiling. But that was then, and this is now, and things are different. The Casey Novak of five years ago has given way to the Casey Novak of now. She is experienced now, jaded, even.

But when she thinks about it, it still hurts.

Beside her in the picture is another smiling face, but in it, she only sees her heart. Once upon a time, she loved this man, and this was a picture of which she thought she would have many. Now, she knows that the dreams of her past are just that. Dreams. When she goes home, there will be the mail, the television and her computer. Nothing more.

Once upon a time, she knew where she was headed.

Now she isn't sure. And she'd love to throw a fit at Olivia, to scream at her and call her a bitch and ask her why the hell she brought it all up for in the first place. But that will solve nothing, and Casey knows it. The pen remains where it is. Casey continues to watch, suddenly exhausted, but not wanting to move, for fear that the pen will drop.

She has the feeling that if it does, she just might break.

And it is stupid because she is supposed to be unbreakable. Ridiculous, because it wasn't supposed to get to her. Idiotic, even, because she shouldn't have pulled that move in court and damn McCoy, anyway, the whole DA's office knows he's known for breaking the rules, District Attorney or not, and who does he think he is? He ran the Homicide Bureau, not the Sex Crimes Bureau, Casey thinks, almost bitterly, and keeps her eyes on the pen.

It remains where it is, and she wonders for a moment if time has stopped.

She used to think that she could help. That somehow, she could make Charlie better, that if she loved him enough, all the problems would go away. That if she loved him enough, he would realize that he wasn't only hurting himself, he was hurting her, and that maybe, that would be enough to cause him to change. But she was naïve then, and isn't now, and she knows that it isn't how it works, no matter how much she wants it to be that way.

Leaving him had been the hardest decision in the world to make, but she'd made it.

Five years ago, she had cuts and bruises on her face and the cops in her apartment because someone called in a domestic dispute. She told the cops that it was a mistake, that there was nothing wrong. Identified herself as an Assistant District Attorney and asked them not to make trouble for Charlie, because he hadn't meant it. Hadn't meant to hurt her, hadn't meant for them to show up…hadn't meant any of it.

It had gone away. But now it is back and staring her in the face.

What Casey wants at this point is a break. But she knows that breaks are few and far between and they don't come easily. She wishes that she could go back in time to the moment she really lost him and see if maybe, there wasn't a way to fix it after all. She wishes that she could go back to that phone call and make it so that it never happened, but, she can't do that either.

The business card she was handed at the morgue that night had been enough to break her.

Somehow it hadn't. Somehow, she had moved on. And now, she was here and he was not, and there was six feet of dirt on top of the casket that held him, and the headstone that bore his name, date of birth and date of death. There is still heartache, but it has dulled. But at the same time, it does not mean that it cannot return, and it has. Casey highly doubts that she is really as over losing him as she thinks she is.

Footsteps outside the office catch her attention and she looks up.

In that same split second, the pen falls to the floor. The sound echoes, loudly.

It takes Casey a moment to realize that she's suddenly in tears.


End file.
